Torns praise brave actions

Launceston Tornadoes Basketball team manager Jenn Heggarty said everyone needed to teach their daughters to be heard and to teach their sons that it is not ok.

“It’s been awhile since I have been in a mosh-pit but I distinctly remember thinking about what I was wearing before I would go to a concert to protect myself from wandering hands, it was always tight jeans, a belt and a top that I could tuck in," she said.

“At the time I just thought ‘oh it’s just part of being in the mosh-pit’ and you would always be fighting it off and fighting it off and it would kind of ruin the night."

The Examiner launched the campaign following revelations that women were seriously assaulted at Falls Festival at Marion Bay.

“It is an incredible thing that these women spoke up and that there is a campaign like this that can cause community conversations and people actually now are realising, recognising and remembering that it’s not ok,”  Tornadoes club chairperson Janie Finlay said.

Player Olivia Chugg said she believed victims often did not report incidences of sexual harassment or assault because many saw it as normal behaviour.

She said she hoped exposing children to successful female athletes would help to change views of women.

“They are being brought up differently to respect women as athletes at that higher level, they are not looking at us like ‘oh they are ladies why are they playing basketball’,” she said.

“It’s like football and cricket, now they’ve got ladies too and it’s such a big thing in Australia to have ladies playing at that higher level. I think it’s important for young boys, even more so than young girls, to see that it is still as important as the men playing at a high level.”

Ms Heggarty said the Tornadoes players were idolised by girls and boys aged from four up to 18-years-old, who would often ask for autographs at the end of basketball games in Launceston.

“My 12-year-old son and his best mate had to write who their basketball idols were and [they] wrote Mikaela Ruff and Lauren Mansfield [from the Launceston Tornadoes], as well as a couple of NBA players, but I think that we have this really great opportunity to promote women's sport and female athletes as boys sporting heroes,” she said.